Colorants are either natural pigments or synthetic dyes. The commercial colorants must meet high governmental regulatory standards. Most of artificial colorants are toxic to human beings. In recent years, some federal approved artificial colorants have been reported to be toxic as food additives. The safety concern of artificial colorants arises interest in finding new natural pigments.
Currently, the market of natural pigments grows at a two-fold speed than that of synthetic dyes in the world. The huge market of color additives and color cosmetics has also prompted extensive research in finding more natural pigments from plants, insects and animals.
However, despite the huge efforts of the researchers, to date, the natural pigments available in industry are rare, particularly, the red water soluble pigment.
The object of the present invention is to isolate and purify an unknown natural pigment from the culture medium of a species of microalgae, Tetraselmis sp. MACC/P66.